Dustin Brants's page

Anyone a fan of Kim Possible or at least used to be?

Did you like the show?

Favorite characters?

Mystical Monkey Powers shall be Mine!

Wolfthulhu wrote:

BUT, lets not be all derogatory towards those who have a somewhat different playstyle preference. From what I've read they will be looking for some balance, weighted a bit on the sandboxy side.

Hear, hear. Since I'm pretty much the poster child, I suspect, for the "carebear" type of player in an MMO... that term tends to raise my hackles.

Personally, I'm hoping there'll be draws for BOTH types of MMO players in this game.

Yeah, I really want to work 50 or 60 hours a week, and finally get to play this thing two months after it comes out, so I can get jumped by a pack of 12 year olds with 35th level characters who have been up until 4 am all f#@$ing summer farming dire rats.

Hey, can we have headsets too? A bunch of little kids screaming "NOOOOOOB!" really is awesome.

I gotcher Carebear hangin,......ragga fragga....

Berselius wrote:

Wait, your asking US to invest in this IDEA of yours? Isn't that a bit pretentious? I mean, asking the consumer to invest in an idea that they'll ultimately have to purchase anyways in order to play? It's like saying we want you to fund the production of OUR PRODUCT so that you can eventually spend even MORE MONEY to BUY the product we're having you FUND. Am I wrong on this? I sure as hell hope I am.

I think you misunderstood the post. The call for investors isn't a "hey, give us money so we can build this," or even a Kickstarter-style "donate and when it's done we'll give you something neat." This is a straight-up investment, like buying stock in any company. No altruism required.

If it was a single player game, à la Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, as others stated, I'd be pinching in right away.

For a MMO, no thank you.

Fred

I wish it was a non MMO even if it was something as simple as Baldur's Gate. Not sure if an MMO is a good idea because player's will abandon the tabletop game for this endless MMO. Not a very good way to promote tabletop RPG games.

Because they have the shoulders to hold it?

beacasue they can....bear it? :)

I hear and obey.

Paizo has already shown with the PF Beginner Box that the base rules of Pathfinder can be simplified without very much loss in compatibility by simply editing the choices available and presenting the rules material in a more user friendly fashion.

And there's a reason we stopped where we did: after 5th level, things start getting *much* more complicated. Multiple attacks. Lots of people flying. Spells that can't be communicated in four lines of text. I'm pretty confident that we *couldn't* cover levels 6 through 10 in the same space; I think even covering 6 through 8 in that page count would be a challenge.

As I said before, it's in everyone's best interest that we bring Beginner Box players who want to expand their game beyond that box into the full Pathfinder RPG as quickly as possible, because that opens doors to literally hundreds of fascinating adventures, sourcebooks, and rulebooks, plus Pathfinder Society organized play, a very large network of players, and a host of third-party and even 3.5 and 3.0 materials they can use in their game.

It's one thing to give them support that *eases* that transition, but giving them reasons to *delay* that transition would be a mistake.

There's a reason this is called the Beginner Box and not, say, the Basic Game.

Um you mean you when D&D was at it's most popular?

Never got the whole 'split' your customer base thing. Who cares as long as they are buying from you. The only thing that makes this questionable is do they have enough people to continue to develope and write things for both APF and BPF. Otherwise I think they should put some thought into it.

It may have been at it's most popular, but the splitting of the customer base is the #1 reason why TSR went out of business. It would take me a couple of hours to explain why this was the case, but as the person responsible at WotC for taking the old TSR data and analyzing it to see why they went belly up, the biggest cause that I found was splitting the customer base into segments. Whether it was D&D vs. AD&D. Or Forgotten Realms vs. Ravenloft vs. Greyhawk vs. Dragonlance vs. Birthright vs. Dark Sun vs. Planescape vs. Mystara vs. Al-Qadim vs. Spelljammer vs. Lanhkmar vs. any other setting book that they produced. Splitting the customer base means lower sales on any particular product which means lower profit margins which eventually means going belly up.

-Lisa

I used to yell about Paizo making Monster Vault-style tokens a few months ago. Heck, I even made a thread about it. Figures.

You know what? Screw you, tokens. You fail. You fail at life itself. You're unbalanced and irrelevant, like a Commner next to a GodWizard. Pawns are GodWizards. I want Pawns. I want Paizo to make lots of Pawns. Pawns good, even better than Prawns or Paws.

Pawns. Me wants me Pawnsies.

Mikaze wrote:

There's an easy solution to that:

Don't force rape into every half-orc's origin.

If you're up to explain a 10yr old how that LOTR/Warhammer-style waaaargh find the halflings, torch the village orc brute has had a love-based relationship with any human female it's fine, but I wouldn't want to be in position to handle that.

Just having non-evil, non-LOTR/Warhammer-style orcs is an option too.

One thing to consider when making the TSR comparison:

AD&D wasn't nearly as crunchy as Pathfinder is. I don't recall many people yearning for a simpler system in the AD&D days. People who played B/X (et al) either moved on to AD&D or stayed with B/X or BECMI because they were happy with it and it was, in some cases, less expensive. I don't ever remember hearing someone say they were moving back to Basic because AD&D was too crunchy. That isn't the case with PF. There are people who will not play PF because of the crunch level, but who *would* play PF Basic.

As a person who's written for AD&D 2E, D&D 3E, and Pathfinder RPG, I'll give you a little 2E vs. 3E rant:

Yes, AD&D 2E was a simpler game than 3E.
Mainly because much of the rules were written to rely more on DM rulings than hard numbers in the books.
In 3E, much of the "the DM will make a ruling on this" was replaced with actual DCs for various game elements. Some examples of 2E vagueness:
Animal Handling: This proficiency takes up 8 lines. No details on how long it takes to use the skill on an animal, how long it lasts, and so on. (Animal Training is a separate prof that takes up about half a page.)
Disguise: 14 lines.
Healing: less than half a page.

Yet, strangely, the 2E DMG devotes 5 pages to creating magic items (compared to the 3.5 DMG's 6+ pages, not including the text for item creation feats), with detailed advice like "The fantastical approach takes a drastically different view of item creation... Thus, to make the rope of climbing, the DM could require a skein of unspun yarn, the voice of a spider, and the courage of a daring thief. The player would then have to discover the meaning of each ingredient or the means to produce it. This, in turn, could require more research and spells to accomplish the goal." Because that's helpful and fun.

And advice like "The basic cost of these [potion ingredients] ranges from 200 to 1,000 gp. The DM should decide this based on how common the potion is, its power, and the nature of the ingredients he has specified. A potion of dragon control is a rare item of great power and so should cost the full 1,000 gp. A potion of healing is a fairly necessary item, something the DM may want to be readily available to the characters. Therefore, it should be cheap, costing no more than 200 gp."

(Oh, plus the 2,000 gp cost of the alchemy lab. And the 10% upkeep cost every month. And there's only a base 70% chance of success, even with this investment. And note that the game doesn't tell you how much treasure a character should have at a particular level, or what gp value you could sell an item for, so you have no idea if 2,000 gp is supposed to be pricey or trivial. The game does tell you how much XP you receive for making the item, though).

And don't get me started on how 2E doesn't tell you what hard sneaking roll should be, or an easy one. My best example of this was writing the free game store adventure tie-in to the Slavers book. There was a smugglers cove inhabited by slaver pirates. The PCs could approach from land, and I wanted to give the slavers a reasonable chance to spot them. What is "reasonable"? The game doesn't really say, so I had to estimate their chances of noticing PCs creeping up. Maybe 1-in-6? The PCs also had the option to approach from the water, and I wanted to give the slavers a slightly a harder chance to spot them. What is "harder"? Again, the game doesn't really say, so I estimated the slavers' chance at 1-in-8. Completely arbitrary, and much different than "the PCs make Hide checks, and get a +2 bonus if they approach from the water instead of the land." In 2E this, like so many things, was left for the DM to just make up, with no firm guidelines, and no way to know if you'd be consistent from one game session to the next.

So yes, AD&D was a simpler system--because it put the brunt of the decision-making on the DM. You could simplify the game even further by just printing one rule: "Make the players roll to succeed at things, just make sure it's challenging enough that they have fun and don't feel like it's a cakewalk." Simplest tabletop RPG ever... but what is "challenging" to one DM isn't going to be the same to another. One DM may think jumping across a 5-foot gap is challenging, another may think a 15-foot gap is challenging. 3E added a lot of complexity by creating a lot of detailed examples of how to do things so everyone who played would have a consistent play experience, where a 5th-level rogue with maxed ranks in Climb can easily scale a typical dungeon wall no matter whose campaign your in.

End rant.

Is the Beginner Box a simpler version of the rules than the Core Rulebook? Certainly. But even where the BB rules are the same as the CR rules, I believe the BB explains things more clearly than the CR--because I rewrote it to be so. I'm sure you could easily add other Core Rulebook rules into BB play if they were rewritten for clarity. And I'm sure, if that happened, people would be ok with using those rules and wouldn't feel the game is too complex.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a smart guy, I use big words, and when I was playing as a kid, after the D&D Basic and Expert sets I started reading Gygax's 1E AD&D PH and DMG. I understand the beauty of using interesting/archaic language to add to the feel of an adventure or campaign. And reading those books challenged my mind and made me want to look up all the weird words so I'd know what they meant. But when you're writing rules, it's better to aim for clarity rather than beauty. Especially in a game where a simple word like "level" could, in context, mean class level, character level, spell level, or dungeon level.

If that means you don't use phrases like "possessions" when you mean "gear," or "a host of" when you mean "many," or "the number of levels in the cleric class that you possess" when you mean "your cleric level," so be it--write for clarity.

TLDR: It's okay to have a crunchy, complex game if you present the rules in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-remember way.

Dude your players respawn? Luuucky. The last time I killed them I had to bust out the backhoe ;D

Kolokotroni wrote:

What concerns me is all the people indicating that legitimate character deaths to be replaced with actual new characters ought to be brought in at lower levels and under geared. All that will lead to is more character deaths for the player. I dont think that is reasonable.

Why not? As long as the character can catch back up with the others it is the fairest way to set this up. It won't lead to more deaths if the GM is doing his job. Encounters should be balanced to the party... if the party APL drops so should the difficulty of what they face.

Aside from the fact that you dont actually catch up in the rules in xp. And short of metagame restrictions there is no way to catch up in gear (assuming rewards are split evenly among the party, what makes this the 'fairest' way to set it up? Why is it more fair for a player to come in at a lower level? Because they didnt have to work for their xp? But they did, as a player they played through whatever encounters everyone else did, the just had bad luck or made a bad choice or what have you and got themselves killed. What injustice is there in a character death that requires an evening of the scales with the new character being worse off then everyone else?

Not to mention that balancing for APL doesnt mean individual threats are balanced for individual players. If death is punished at coming in at a lower level then it is easy to have 2 or 3 level differences in the party. There is a huge difference between what is a reasonable thread for a 6th level character and a 3rd level character. So either the 3rd level character is facing an overly dangerous threat, or the 6th level character is unchallenged. And usually it will be the former, meaning the character will have a greater chance of death, which will just increase the problem.

Let's consider another point -- by forcing them to change characters you are already punishing the player. These players obviously want to play their initial character, to the point they'll reskin it to play it again in the same campaign.

Forcing them to play a different character on death -- is already punishing them by not letting them play what they want. Why go another step or three by also reducing their new character in power more by not making them the same level or by not giving them gear?

Also if all they have is the gear their dead character had -- of course they are going to re-skin -- the equipment is for that character type!

Now I'm not trying to say that players deserve everything they want -- but listen to what their actions are telling you! and actually think about the message you are actually sending with your actions instead of the message you want them to take home.

Also some horrible ideas here, "YOU FAILED! So we are going to punish you more by making you suck more! Obviously that will make you do better!"

Because punishing them for coming back is obviously going to help them not have to do it again, making them weaker will certainly help them survive better, and punishing their new character for something that happened is the best possible choice cause then it certainly won't happen again.

I got a new guy from a different group once -- he quit the other group because the only way he ever leveled was when his character died again and advanced to the lowest party member's level -1. It was a never ending circle for him -- his first character died, and then he was easier to kill next time, so he died again, until he ended up being the joke red shirt character -- of course each death was viewed as, "his fault" so he never even got a break from the cycle. I'm glad he left the other group because he's been a great contributor at mine.

"As a GM I sometimes simply kill the players when they move to engage when they shouldn't -- now I'm upset that they still want to play the same character in the same campaign and I've not provided a way for that to happen, so they simply reskin the character and play them again."

I'm sorry I'm seeing a disconnect here between what you are doing and what you are expecting as a GM.

Your players are explicitly telling you what they want -- to continue playing their current character so make it possible without respawning.

When in doubt give them what they want -- much like a GM they'll find a means of getting it anyways.

This isn't anything to do with the game and everything to do with mismatched expectations and miscommunication.

I'm fine with having them in die-cut sheets, just as in the beginner box.

Bel.

I'm a gamer. I'm also 44. I am married and have a daughter. I've been playing D&D since I was 10. Yes, that's 34 years now.

I have long wanted a good way to get my daughter into gaming. She's interested. But the recent WotC Red Box reissue (which I thought would be cool) was totally lame.

Paizo's Beginner Box, though, looks like just the ticket.

Our hobby has always needed a good way to get new players in, and as the intro rules get more and more complex, that becomes harder and harder. Heck, CORE Pathfinder is way more complex than AD&D ever was. So the more hard core the main rules get, the more sense it makes to have a beginner's product.

Bottom line: My daughter is getting this under the tree this Christmas.

Let the unicorn adventures begin!

Ponyfinder.

I'm a gamer. I'm also 44. I am married and have a daughter. I've been playing D&D since I was 10. Yes, that's 34 years now.

I have long wanted a good way to get my daughter into gaming. She's interested. But the recent WotC Red Box reissue (which I thought would be cool) was totally lame.

Paizo's Beginner Box, though, looks like just the ticket.

Our hobby has always needed a good way to get new players in, and as the intro rules get more and more complex, that becomes harder and harder. Heck, CORE Pathfinder is way more complex than AD&D ever was. So the more hard core the main rules get, the more sense it makes to have a beginner's product.

Bottom line: My daughter is getting this under the tree this Christmas.

Let the unicorn adventures begin!

As we speak, the Legendary Games Design Team is talking about good ways to support the Beginner's Box with Legendary encounters and short adventures. I think that would be fun.

You'll need to consider that the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility License says: "You may not reference any Paizo products that are not listed in Exhibit B" and the Beginner Box is not listed in Exhibit B.

This is deliberate. To be frank, we don't want to encourage our audience to split themselves into Core Rulebook players and Beginner Box players; we want to encourage most Beginner Box players to eventually move on to the Core Rulebook so that they can fully interact with our existing community, play in the Pathfinder Society, and expand their game with the hundreds of PFRPG products that are already out there.

Our own support for the Beginner Box will generally include stuff designed to ease the transition to the Core Rulebook; for example, the free Beginner Box GM Kit we're about to release has a section on how to use published low-level Pathfinder RPG adventures with the Beginner Box.

Will Paizo consider releasing a Player Pack II introducing another class and a few more options?

Part of the reason that we selected the classes we did is that they have relatively simple rules. Most (if not all) of the other classes require additional—and more complicated—rules than we want in the Beginner Box environment. Players interested in more complex classes should probably be considering the Core Rulebook.

My exact quote was "Ultimately, it's in our best interest to get people who have outgrown the Beginner Box to transition to the full Pathfinder RPG as soon as possible."

While I'm clarifying my own sentences, I might as well point out that, in addition to being in Paizo's best interest, it's really in the best interest of Pathfinder players at all levels, too. It's in the best interest of graduating Beginner Box players because it immediately opens up hundreds and hundreds of compatible products, and it's in the best interest of core RPG players because we won't have to divide our attention supporting multiple lines, and it's in the best interest of the community because, well, one large community is better than two small ones (in most ways, anyway).

My only complaint with the Beginner Box figures is that they aren't two-sided. A front and a back picture would be useful when running combats to eliminate arguments about the character's facing.

Did you know that the Beginner Box (and the Core Rulebook) don't use facing at all?

I mentioned this in the Beginner Box Preview thread, but I think these things deserve their own thread.

Pawns:

I LOVE THEM

Paizo, I think you should seriously consider a line of these things. Think about the plus side:
• You already have the artwork
• They must be relatively cheap to make (compared to minis)
• They could be sold by the sheet or in campaign packs
• You could also sell the bases separately

From our end:
• They are easy to store
• They are easy to assemble
• They are light-weight
• They are durable
• They are simple to use
• They match the art from the books
• They don't need to be assembled

A win/win all the way around!

I don't want a basicPathfinder version that is different from Pathfinder and I highly doubt that Paizo would produce something like that.

It hasn't worked for TSR, it hasn't worked for WotC and it isn't needed.

Buy the beginners box and get some experience in GMing as you level your players to 5. Then switch to full rules and simple ignore all the rules you find too complicated. Works pretty well, in fact, almost everyone does it one way or the other.

It really did not work well for TSR. Spliting the player base into diffent groups lead to the downfall of TSR.

Golden-Esque wrote:

If you make the race a humanoid, you can call the Subtype whatever you want. The rules clearly say that the subtype for humanoids is the same as the race's name in most cases; if you have a dragonborn race, then you have the dragonborn subtype.

You are correct, and some of the racial traits would work form them, but RAW they are not valid because they are tied to things of the wrong type. Elemental resistance is tied to outsiders for example.

the bolded part (emphasis mine) is my single biggest concern so far with the playtest.

I would really like the pre-req's to be tied to other customization options. Want Fire immunity? How about Prerequisite: Advanced race. Or Prerequisite: +2 con racial ability (still limiting, but now means I'm not making my -2CON races immune to damage types just to tweak them*). Or Pre-requisite: None, even???

*man, that's a cheese I'd like to tackle if I can find a minute - build a -2 or -4 CON race and then stack immunities and DR so even though I have really low HP, you can't hurt me

Or even better, don't go on jobs without bigger promises for rewards. Refuse to go on missions that don't pay well.

Look at it like you're in a business.

If someone wants you to do a job, demand a steep price (steeper than reasonable, since youre so far behind and need to catch up).

Demand your pay 50% up front. Take multiple jobs at once, for bigger gear boosts, before you attempt any quest.

or.. You said you have 500g? Avoid any challenges with a CR that doesn't match the L in your WBL.

Seriously. You should be having fun, and if the GM is going to change the rules, he should have a solid justification for why, and a good handle on what hes doing, and ALL of the repercussions of the changes he makes. It does not sound like this is the case.

Tell him you guys aren't having fun, with the way he's been running the game. You're so severely underequipped that you can't afford to fight the things he throws at you, and point out your argument that the only thing he rewards in his campaign is character death.

Grab another DM if you can, DM it yourself, or as mentioned, just go play some videogames.

A game thats not fun is a game not worth playing.

Your Neutral Evil advice for the thread is to each have your characters stay in town, earning GPs through craft, performance, and profession checks until you have the appropriate amount of gold pieces. Do not pick up any plot threads: say that your character lacks the resources to take on such a fearsome quest and it is best for the world if someone better prepared handles it.

Let 2 years pass in game.

Then have your characters look around for adventure.

It's Gandhi's principle of passive resistance applied in a ridiculous fashion. The DM cannot make you do anything you don't choose to do. If you all stick together, he cannot budge you. You are making the gaming table a better place for us all.

Treantmonk wrote:

Good stuff.

Alright. I was thinking that was probably the reasoning, but I'm not anywhere near as good at subtle rules nuances as I was once upon a time and wanted to make sure it wasn't something fundamental I was missing.

Thanks for your reply.

Anytime.

This is kind of another topic, but just as an aside, if Oracle is fast becoming your favorite class, I wonder why?

I find they suffer the same problem I find with Sorcerers.

They are labelled "spontaneous" casters, but they only get one choice of their highest level spell when they first qualify for that spell level.

Spontaneously casting from a list of one isn't spontaneous, nor does it give you reasonable opportunity to have versatility.

If you are expected to be a party healer, this is a bigger concern.

Whether or not you ignore the Wealth By Level tables... it's VERY important for the GM to be familiar with why they're there anyway. Because one of the things Pathfinder assumes is that the PCs WILL have treasure of a certain amount by certain levels. If you're playing in a game where character wealth is super low, the GM should take pains to adjust encounters as appropriate.

And when a new PC joins the group, he REALLY should give that new PC wealth equal to the average possessed by the party—a situation where the average PC wealth is 500 and a newly created character would have 10,500 is blatantly unfair and disrespectful of the players who HAVE played their characters.

My advice? Start a new game with one of the other players in your group as the GM. If you've already got enough players for a game, having a game with one fewer player (assuming that your current GM doesn't want to keep playing a PC), playing a game with one less player is much more rewarding and fun than playing with a GM who seems to be only interested in tormenting his fellow gamers.

(Of course... we're only seeing one side of the situation here, but it certainly doesn't SOUND like a fun one to be a player in...)

Draw up a simple character. That character commits suicide. Come back as what you want to play with 10.5k in magic items. Suggest the rest of your group do so as well.

So basically the dm is heavy handed, doesn't have a good grasp of the rules, and is completely uninterested in changing? This game isn't worth it. Park me on the go play some xbox bandwagon. Life is too short for crummy dms and bad games.

I'm going out on a limb and guessing the only good thing about this game is that you have one.

I believe it may be time to cut your losses.

So...what are the good points of this game?

In the game that I am currently playing in, every player is level 5.

At level 5 we are supposed to have 10,500 gold worth of items.

Each player currently has 1/10 of what we should have as level 5 characters. It has gotten so bad that the cleric refuses to memorize any restoration spells because it is too costly to cast it.

The summoner is afraid to send his eidolon into combat because everything we have been fighting deals ability damage and the eidolon can not heal it.

What class would you guys take so that you had no reliance on magic items provided by your DM?

Xbox. I wouldn't play with a DM that blindsided me like that.

Master; summoner is actually a great choice; take the feats that let you get +1 summon and give them blindsight etc. Spam battlefield, win, rinse, repeat

Right now you could be dumping d4+2 Celestial Riding Dogs with +4 Str / Con 9 times / day; and they would shine light, be immune to blindness, have blindsense, and eat enemies alive. Haste them. Rinse, repeat.

I'm working on a more involved thread that catches most of my observations, but this one doesn't fit there, so I'm posting it separately:

Large and Tiny should probably not give a size bonus to ability scores, since then this would lead to weirdness where it doesn't stack with size bonuses from spells or abilities. It doesn't make sense that an ogre would gain +2 strength from Enlarge Person while an Advanced Race Guide 'Ogron' race would not.

James Jacobs wrote:

Advanced Race Guide.

I'm repeating myself here because this playtest, which is a part of the upcoming Advaned Race Guide, is PRECISELY us trying to "figure out how to deal with more powerful races" as player character options.

I get what you're saying, and I see the direction you're going with this first playtest. And while I don't see anything wrong with the build-your-own-race-as-a-stand-in-for-monsters approach, there seems to be a lack of guidelines for playing anything beyond the standard 10 RP races. I simply suggest exploring different means by which a player can try his hand at making an advanced or monstrous race without forcing the GM to boost all of the other PCs to compensate. I propose a Savage Species style delayed progression as one possible approach. If you can think of something better then, by all means, try it out in the playtest. =)

It's just a playtest. It's raw rules, really. Feedback from the playtest is what we'll use to inform and advise us on what to write for guidelines, particularly on playing things beyond the standard. Note that it's entirely possible that the feedback we get could lead us to decide that it's NOT a good idea for players to play races with racial HD. I know that'd disappoint some fans, but I'd rather just admit it's not really a good idea to use the Pathfinder RPG to make PCs out of dragons and demons and spectres and awakened rocs, any more so than it's a good idea to use a power drill as a hammer.

One thing that I know we don't want to do is present racial HD monsters as "classes" you can take (the Savage Species style), though. Monsters like succubui and medusas and chimeras and krakens and lillends and hill giants were never intended to be PC options, and forcing them to be while still trying to keep them what they are as monsters is probably a pointless exercise in frustration. Especially since the game itself is built for players characters who have a head, two arms, and two legs.

What folks are often asking for when they ask for rules on playing characters SO different from human shape is, effectively, rules for an entirely different game from the ground up.

Advanced Race Guide is for the Pathfinder Game, not that theoretical new RPG, and as such it's going to skew VERY heavily toward the creation of zero HD human-shaped races. But if we can set up this race-building section so that it can handle increasingly unusual races... that's great!

James Jacobs wrote:

Because ECL caused more problems than it solved.

Fair enough. So what would you recommend for those wanting to play monster PCs?

Advanced Race Guide.

Because ECL caused more problems than it solved.

I just don't understand why I am unable to make a tiny construct (homonculus-like race) or a tiny plant race (mycanids anyone?)...

It is SO arbitrary and restrictive as to defy any of my logic.

Umbral Reaver wrote:

What's the chance that we'll see a second playtest document that is built upon the altered premises, if you do take that road?

All we really need to do is alter some "offending" point costs, and not treat all the core races as 10 points, If the dwarf comes out as 11 (but is still considered a standard race) and the halfling comes out as 7, then the basics of the system will not necessarily change, only a few of the ability points.

If we do a second playtest, the major change you will see is some point tweaking.

Could you add to your list of change considerations unlinking racial abilities? I think it makes for a much more fun and varied toolbox if you don't have to be type-dwarf to pick up Hardy, for example.

Okay folks, got it. You want us to reassess some of the abilities, and you don't care if the points of all core races add up to 10 points. I will put that on the list of strong considerations for the final iteration of the system.

Thank you for the feedback. We hear you. We want to create a system that you all will like and your GM will use to create new races for the game, so this aspect of the system will be reexamined given the arguments you all put forward.

I have not read the entire thread, but all the races are not equal. Having a spread, say 8 to 12 points, as an example is better than pretending all of them are equal. We as players know all the races are not perfectly evil, and that is ok. Some people will complain, but you can't please everyone. In any event the RP of the core races needs to be reevaluated.

Then why are Halflings so common in my games? Every group I have been a part of had players that played Halflings. You would figure if they were as bad as every one said no one would want to play them. That is not the case.

Perhaps your players don't care about being the most uber leet. Or perhaps they're wanting to play dex or charisma based characters. Or mounted characters. Their attributes are a pretty decent set, in that dexterity and charisma (on charisma based characters) generally do stuff. Constitution helps keep you alive, but you don't get to do much with it (and the same with wisdom, unless of course you're a cleric, druid, or inquisitor).

Note: I never said halflings were a bad race, I said their racial abilities are less powerful than those of the dwarves.

I think either of these things solve this particular problem. No one seems to have a problem with dwarves having this ability (okay, maybe someone out there does...I'm sure they will poke their head up if this is the case), it only seem to be a problem if another race you are building takes this. It just feels too powerful, unless you're a dwarf.

Well the dwarves *are* the strongest race. Bonuses to good stats, penalties to a usual dump stat. And the Hardy ability.

Not only that, they have the option to further enhance that ability to +5! Steel Soul adds another +2 and Glory of Old trait adds one more.

Point is... Where's the feat to increase Halflings' bonuses to saves?

This isn't a discussion whether dwarves shoould be *nerfed*, everybody is aware that they are mathematically strongest. And I'm sure that people aren't picking dwarves deliberately as their race just because of that, just as they aren't avoiding halflings because they're weaker than the rest.

Just a system that's based on an assumption that everyone is equal is a flawed system.

Mate, that is another problem that has been pointed out.

No subtype pre-req!.

Why? Cause we don't want to make races that "look like" other races, we want new races too. The max you could do is put it at a discount like "if you have the x-subtype this ability costs X RP less"

Gotta say, the prevalence of pre-reqs going back to pre-existing races is another thing a lot of us have been coming out against too.

Many of us want to use this toolkit to build whole new races, not new flavors of dwarf or elf. That's why so many have complained about Elven Magic and the like, as well as all the abilities that have creature type requirements(like how only Fey can be Tiny for one example).

@SRM So you are going to just tell me that +2 to profession: baker or the ability to pick any language as a bonus language is balanced with say the ability to re-roll a 1 once per day?

Because I'm a fairly smart person. I don't believe you.